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Wednesday, June 11, 2014

Alleged Photographs of German Skirmishers Advancing Towards a French Position at La Moncelle During the Battle of Sedan

There has been a lot of discussion of
these photographs online about whether or not they are authentic combat
photographs from the Franco-Prussian War. At the moment I think they are images from some sort of elaborate recreation
that were made to sell postcards or else some other attempt to document
the conflict by photographing a reenactment. If these photographs were
real, the hardest thing to explain would be the position of the
photographer as he would have been in an extremely exposed position. What I
once thought were French soldiers in the second and third photographs in
the foreground are actually clearly firing towards the photographer in
sharper versions of the photographs I have found, which would mean that they are more German soldiers. There doesn't
seem to be any blurring in the photographs caused by movement of the
soldiers which was a common trait in photos of the era and could be a sign that the photographs are posed. Cameras with fast exposure times which would minimize
any blurring existed at the time but their use was not very
widespread.

The first photograph.

What I have deemed the first photograph is on a postcard that is said
to show lines of German skirmishers advancing towards a French position
at La Moncelle during the Battle of Sedan in 1870. A few fascinating
details that are discernible in this photograph are the trail of what
some think is blood flowing from a spot next to the doorway of the house
in the foreground, the bullet holes visible in the same house, the
columns of German soldiers marching down the road, and the large amount
of smoke rising in the distance to the left. I have also assembled seven related photographs below, possibly for the first time online, that were
taken at the same event:

Uncropped lower resolution version of the photograph from Getty. Source.

Second photograph taken from another angle at a noticeably different
time. What look like German soldiers in the foreground who seem to be
facing the camera and firing. They appear much closer than they were
when some of them presumably were in their skirmish lines and columns in
the first photograph. What appears to be additional columns of German
infantry can be seen marching down the road in the left background. The puffs of smoke in the trees in the right background look much more prominent than they do in the first photograph.

Uncropped lower resolution version of the second photograph from Getty. Source.

A third photograph taken from what looks like the same position as
the second image. The German soldiers in the foreground look like
they are clearly aiming their rifles in the direction of the
photographer. There seems to have been at least three other versions of postcards featuring this photograph I have collected below.